Stabs-in-the-back in Vietnam and Afghanistan?

Fred Kaplan a couple of weeks ago look at the ongoing politics of the Afghanistan exit. In The Afghanistan Blame Game Has Begun in the Senate Slate 09/28/2021. He records a moment especially worth remembering:

Not quite one month after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, we are now entering the phase when our politicians ask, “Who’s to blame?”

It officially began on Tuesday, when the top three officials responsible for the war—Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin; Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of Central Command—appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. One of the most remarkable things about the hearing was that all three admitted that there’s something worth blaming someone for — that the 20-year war, the longest in our history, was a rout. Or, as both generals put it in more delicate but still damning terms, a “strategic failure.” [my emphasis]

After Vietnam, the military and the war fans among the foreign policy establishment established a stab-in-the-back theory of the Vienam War, in which the Pentagon did nothing but win, but the gutless politicians back home. At that time (1974), Gerald Ford was President and Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State, and they consciously set up a stab-in-the-back theory to blame Democratic war critics. (See my post More skepticism on Healer-in-Chief Jerry Ford 12/29/2006.

John Prados in his excellent book Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 (2009) includes these observations:

To this day, war defenders and neo-orthodox historians have been unable to propose a convincing argument for how the Vietnam war could have been won. ...

... some of the defenders and the neo-orthodox have resorted to the proposition that the United States did win in Vietnam. Aside from the fact that Hanoi's troops ended the conflict by marching into Saigon, and not the other way around, this claim ignores a plethora of evidence. In explaining the actual outcome, proponents are forced into a stab-in-the-back argument: Congress lost the war, the Movement lost the war, the press, or whatever. These explanations trivialize historical forces: the social, political, and economic dynamics at work in Vietnam, the United States, and the world. They also distort the political and military events that defined its actual course. The atomization of the history of the war has, until now, made trivialization and distortion easier. Triumph was not forsaken in Vietnam, nor victory lost; there was no day that the war was won, except for Hanoi on April 29, 1975, when its troops marched into Saigon. [my emphasis in bold]

I'll also note here the judgment made by Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense 1961-1968 and one of the chief US decision-makers in the Vietnam War, in a 1999 book, Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy:

At no time, beginning with the increase of U.S. military advisers early in the Kennedy administration to the final withdrawal of American troops during the Nixon administration, would it have been possible at acceptable cost-in terms of American and Vietnamese lives lost and without the risk of war with China and/or Russia-to achieve a military victory in Vietnam. From 1964 forward, there did not exist an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam with the ability to provide services and security to the rural population of South Vietnam to thereby win over its loyalty. To put it bluntly, America's efforts to substitute for South Vietnam's government and army through force of arms were doomed to failure from the very beginning. Both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson at some point in the decisionmaking [sic] process stated that they would not send American boys to do what South Vietnamese boys should be doing. But for various reasons, and on the advice of their senior advisers, they did exactly that. And this nation found out, tragically, that 525,000 American soldiers - however courageous, however well-trained, -equipped, and -supplied - were not the answer to South Vietnam's political problems; the civil war - the Vietnamese "people's war" could not be won by any external military force, no matter how powerful. From 1964 to 1973, the so-called Republic of Vietnam, that is, what we came to know as "South Vietnam," existed only because ot the willingness of the United States to send soldiers to fight on its behalf. When U.S. support was removed, the inevitable results could have been predicted, whether in 1964, 1968, or l973. [my emphasis]

As Kaplan makes clear, the embryonic Afghanistan stab-in-the-back narrative is at least as cynical as the Vietnam War one.

In a column the following day, Kaplan expands on this analysis (We Now Know Why Biden Was in a Hurry to Exit Afghanistan Slate 09/28/2021):

Milley and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, both acknowledged at the hearing that the U.S. military was flying blind through much of its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. The officers of the day tried to mold the Afghan army in their own image, making them too dependent on U.S. technology and support, so that once we withdrew, collapse was inevitable. Milley also noted that he and the other officers paid too little attention to Afghan culture and to the corrosive effects of the Afghan government’s corruption and lack of popular legitimacy. So, Biden might well have been thinking, why should he pay attention to anything these guys had to say on the war in Afghanistan, which they’ve been wrong about from the very beginning?

Biden made several missteps, some of them disastrous, in the pace and sequence of the withdrawal. Most of all, he should have pulled out all the spies, contractors, U.S. citizens, and Afghan helpers before pulling out all the troops. But on the big picture, he was right, and the generals, as they now grudgingly admit, were wrong. [my emphasis]

This is not to say that the US can never win these kinds of "small wars." The US did stop North Korea from taking over South Korea, for instance. It does say that the US needs to do a better job on assessing the real national interests, the strength of the expected opposition, and the particularities of the international situation in these situations.

A reminder that the US military-industrial complex still has way more power and influence than it should

The experienced national security journalist Fred Kaplan passes along a story that probably will not cause much of a ripple in national politics. But it's a reminder about how important it is - maybe I should say would be - for Congress and the Executive Branch to exercise careful control over the Pentagon in a way that was not focused on the profits of the military-industrial complex: The National Security Disaster You Probably Missed Last Week Slate 07/19/2021.

Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell Presidential address made "military-industrial complex" a familiar phrase in the American political vocabulary:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. [my emphasis]

And from the controversies over the Vietnam War in the 1960s through the 1980s which produced the Iran-Contra scandal that arose from The Reagan-Bush Amdinistration's efforts to avoid Congressional oversight over its dirty wars in Central America in particular, it was considered mainstream for Congress to exercise constraints on military policy. I don't mean to imply that Congress pursued an anti-militarist policy. They didn't.

But the level of idolatry of the military and the neglect of critical Congressional oversight that has characterized the last 30 years is a product of the "End of History," the end of the Warsaw Pact in the Revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union. There was a wave of domestic military base closures during the Bush-Quayle Administration that gave a glimpse of what a move toward demilitarizing the federal budget could achieve. That particular moment had a least of a bit of what had been a pacifist's dream a few years before.

But it didn't last long. The sudden shift in the world power balance meant that the US strategists saw fewer constraints on the use of military power, and the number of military interventions expanded. And then the 9/11 attacks and the US response kicked that process into overdrive.

But the fact that the political and media establishment's are negelecting important needs doesn't make the needs go away. Climate change is proceeding on its accelerating course. The nuclear arms race is growing and is an even more severe immediate danger to humanity than climate than climate change. The cold fact is that making the world more and more dangerous is profitable for powerful defense contractors.

Reducing their power is an incredibly difficult task for the political system to take on. But it's an absolutely necessary one.

James Mattis as Defense Secretary

Fred Kaplan takes a critical look at former Defense Secretary James Mattis in The Defeat of General Mattis New York Review of Books 11/21/2019; accessed 10/29/2019.

Mattis served as Trump's Secretary of Defense in 2017 and 2018. Kaplan uses restrained language, but nevertheless portray Mattis as unprepared for the Secretary's job, disrespectful of civilian control over the military, and a tendency to pompous rhetoric of principle not matched by his behavior. Mattis was " in over his head" in that position, writes Kaplan. But he also notes that Mattis' memoir contains very little information about his actual work in that position and also limited information about his dealings with Trump.

James Mattis, US Secretary of Defense 2017-2018

Kaplan calls attention to this historical item:

Mattis didn’t just quit near the end of his second year as secretary of defense; he resigned in protest. He stated that he was leaving not to spend more time with his family (he’s a lifelong bachelor) or to pursue other opportunities, as most departing officials do, but explicitly because of disagreements with the president over policy - something that no cabinet member had done since 1980, when Cyrus Vance resigned as Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state over the (ultimately disastrous) attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran. Mattis’s resignation letter, which he released to the public, lauded the “international order” and asserted that “we cannot protect our interests…without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies” - sentiments that he knew Trump despised. He concluded, addressing the president, “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.” Before Trump read the letter, he tweeted that Mattis would be “retiring, with distinction, at the end of February” and thanked him “greatly” for his service. After he read the letter, he ordered Mattis to leave immediately. [my emphasis]

I tend to think a more robust tradition of senior officials resigning in protest would be a good thing. It all depends on how meaningful their protest is, of course.

Despite Mattis' paying lip service to civilian supremacy over the military, Kaplan observes that Mattis' behavior wasn't consistent with either that formal deference to the Constitutional structure of the government or with having resigned in protest against Trump policies on handling allies:

Ten months after Mattis’s departure from the White House, when Trump flagrantly betrayed the US alliance with the Syrian Kurds - withdrawing troops from northern Syria and giving Turkey a green light to cross the border to crush the Kurds, the most potent and self-sacrificing fighters in the battle against ISIS - he still refused to criticize the president. “I won’t make political assessments right now,” Mattis said during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Remember that the Defense Department stays outside of politics for a reason,” he went on. “There’s a longstanding tradition why you do not want the military to be engaged in politics.”

But this is his problem: he regards “the Defense Department” and “the military” as synonyms, when in fact the former is supposed to supervise and, when necessary, rein in the latter. We don’t want the military to be engaged in politics; but the Defense Department is inherently political, and so is the office of secretary of defense. Yet during his time in that position, Mattis saw himself above all as a general, not as a cabinet secretary whose obligations to the public and the Constitution superseded his military creed. Evidently, he still does. [my emphasis]

Just to be clear, when Kaplan says that Mattis "saw himself above all as a general, not as a cabinet secretary whose obligations to the public and the Constitution superseded his military creed," he is describing a militarist Secretary of Defense, although he doesn't employ that word. Militarism is a Siamese twin to authoritarianism.

Kaplan also points to a management style that can be damaging to any organization, but is especially problematic in the national security context:

He also sidestepped the vast array of civilians, especially the undersecretary of defense for policy and the specialists on his staff. In most administrations, these are the officials who prepare the analyses, itemize the options, serve as expert sounding boards for the secretary’s ideas. Mattis ignored them and, in meetings with his coterie of staff officers, ridiculed the few papers that he read. Before long, civilians left; expertise dried up; Mattis was left flat-footed.

But four-star generals are creatures of enormous self-confidence, which their loyal staffs tend to feed, so at the center of his tight inner circle, Mattis barely noticed the myopia. The result was classic “groupthink,” [Guy ] Snodgrass observes. “We were getting answers to the questions we were asking,” he writes, but, he wonders skeptically, “were we asking the right questions?” They lacked the analytic tools even to notice that they were not. [my emphasis]

Kaplan has a good statement on why the common Pentagon attitude, shared by Mattis, about never completely leaving a war is a really bad idea:

With due respect, “this is getting too costly” is often an excellent reason for pulling out of a war, if only to keep more sons and daughters from dying, especially if the war wasn’t worth fighting in the first place. Another former combat officer, John Kerry, made the point more cogently while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in 1971, as head of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” In [John] Kelly’s view, which Mattis fully endorses, there would have been no “last man to die” in Vietnam, or any other battlefield of folly, because war would have gone on forever. [my emphasis]